


Thirty Is A Labyrinth

by psocoptera



Series: Thirty Fic [21]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: 30Fic, Debt, Favoritism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2039712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah is late for Toby's party, and her car is making that noise again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirty Is A Labyrinth

"Bill, bill, credit card offer, overdue collections notice, bill, and - what's this?" Sarah opens the thin envelope. "Rejection letter!"

She tosses the whole stack onto the existing pile on the coffee table, triggering a small cascade down onto the floor. She's tempted to flop down on the couch and just leave it, but no, if she lets herself do it once, the whole floor will be adrift in books and papers before she knows it. The heaping coffee table is bad enough.

She kneels down and makes herself start sorting while she's down there. Bill, bill, pages 7-10 of a rough draft, junk mail... invitation. She looks blankly at the date. That's today. Oh no, Toby's party!

***

Her car is making that noise again. Sarah drives with one eye on the check engine light, but it stays off all the way to the Barnes & Noble. She buys a gift card briskly - if she had more time, she would dither and sigh over boxed sets and illustrated editions, but she knows Toby will prefer the gift card. He'll probably buy cds. She's sure he would most prefer cash, but the gift card can go on the credit card she had promised herself she wasn't touching for the rest of the month. She can't show up for her little brother's birthday party empty-handed.

The check engine light goes on as she turns onto her old street. She parks at the corner and walks past two BMWs, a Jeep so new it still has dealer plates, and a Mercedes. Sometimes all those shiny curves still make her hands itch for a chair to throw. But Toby is inside this bubble, and smashing things won't help.

***

The party is half teenagers in flannel and half adults in heels and ties - Sarah wonders how many kids got put on Toby's list because her stepmother wanted to invite their parents. She's wearing the broomstick skirt and comfortable shoes she put on this morning, and wonders belatedly if she should have tried to dress up. The right costume can go a long way.

She hasn't seen Toby yet, but her stepmother had skittered over as soon as she let herself in, murmuring "timely as always" and whisking the envelope with the gift card out of her hands.

Now Sarah is lurking by the table, smearing cheese dip on crackers and wishing she could escape upstairs to her old room. Except it's an office now.

"Oh, you must be Robert's daughter!" and now there's a suit and some pearls bearing down on her. She shakes hands. She smiles. She says the right things - yes, it _is_ something to see her little brother turning sixteen, yes, she is "doing all right for herself", whatever that means. She probably isn't, the way they're thinking, but who wants to hear that?

She eels out of the grip of the suit right into the clutches of a silk blouse, whose little girl is looking at colleges already, can you believe it, you sat for her with your brother a few times didn't you. Ivy League, or maybe Williams. Oh, state college. English and Theater, really, and she gives one of those little blinking, twisted-mouth nods that people give things they don't want to understand.

"I need something to drink," Sarah says, and flees.

She remembers being nineteen, and her father asking "what are you going to do with that" and wishing he would ask "what do you love about that" instead.

Sometimes she counts the years until she gets free of her student loans and thinks he had a point. But, no - the people she had met in her classes had been like finding Hoggle and Didymus and Ludo all over again. Arguing Dunsany, wrestling Spenser, it had been something she needed as much as she had needed magic.

She holds that inside herself, a kingdom as great, and lets herself be interrogated by some gleaming white teeth.

***

Toby is eventually extracted from the rec room for cake. He gives Sarah a little wave when he sees her. Sarah has always hoped they would hit some combination of ages where she was the cool big sister, but when he was tiny, she had been so much bigger she must have seemed like just another grownup, and by the time he was older, she really was one.

They sing, and then while her stepmother is busy doling out slices, her father hands Toby a little box.

"We'll wait on the pile of gift cards but how about you open this one right now?" he says, grinning at Toby, and Toby puts down his cake agreeably.

He rips open the gold paper and lifts out a set of car keys. "Oh my god, really?!" he exclaims, and inside, Sarah is thinking the same thing, with less delight.

"Brand new Jeep out front!" her dad says proudly, and there are squeals and high-fives from the other teenagers.

It's not FAIR, she wants to howl, like she's still a kid. Wishes she could leap to her feet and slam her fists on the table and stomp out. They couldn't even help her with college, beyond a few checks that had hardly covered her books, and now her sixteen-year-old brother gets a brand-new car?

She makes herself take a deep breath and keep smiling. It doesn't matter how many years of loan payments her brother is slinging around his finger, her debt isn't suddenly heavier. It's not like they can send money back in time to her. She's thirty years old, she's been on her own for years, this has nothing to do with her. This is how it is.

The keys fly off Toby's finger into the lap of a young woman next to him, who bats her eyes flirtatiously, and everyone cackles like goblins, and Sarah eyes the clock and waits for time to run out.

***

She holds her breath while she turns the ignition, but her car starts and the check engine light doesn't turn on. The noise maybe sounds worse, but what does she know. Maybe it's just the quietness of the night.

She thinks about turning on the radio, but she kind of likes the solitude of darkness without words. Maybe every car is an oubliette, she thinks, and then there's a splutter, and a clunk, and her dashboard lights up red and amber, and her car dies.

She swears and coasts over to the side of the road. The brakes, at least, still work. She leans her forehead against the steering wheel for a long moment, then looks around. She's just a couple of miles from home, and she's legally parked. She can leave the car and call for a tow in the morning. She gets out of the car and is glad for her comfortable shoes. It always pays to be ready to walk.

There's half a moon and it's warm, enough. She sees fireflies in a few bushes and thinks some of them might actually be fairies. She's not really surprised when the owl swoops in over her shoulder and perches on a fence in front of her, although she's still startled, jumping as the tip of his longest feather grazes her neck.

He cocks his head from side to side, but doesn't transform. Sarah is glad. It's always harder when he can touch her.

"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered," she recites, although, really, her checkbook has a decent start on the numbering. She sighs, and rubs her forehead with her fingers. "Jareth, can we just not tonight?"

She doesn't expect anything, but the owl nods, and pushes off from the fence, one great beat of wings and then he's ghosting off into the darkness.

Maybe she shouldn't be surprised; Jareth has always liked big emotions, temptation and fear and defiance, and right now she just feels tired.

She's always wondered if some day he'll stop coming. She's read her Barrie, he should have moved on long ago to some freshly-budded maiden. Maybe he has, maybe he has whole strings of them and has never told her.

She's started to wonder, lately, if she would choose differently, if she knew for sure it was the last time. Give him what he could never steal.

She almost opens her mouth to call him back, to tell him she's fought long enough. But she's got that new story she's working on. And she wants to hear Toby tell her what he's getting with all his gift cards.

She plods the rest of the way home and sinks down onto the couch, eyeing the cluttered coffee table. Her story is in there somewhere, but what's on the top is... student loans.

She narrows her eyes at the papers. "You have no power over me," she says experimentally, but they don't so much as flutter.


End file.
